Former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson was fired from the band in 2021 following an online scandal involving sexually explicit text messages that were leaked to social media.
Ellefson previously criticized Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine for how he was treated during his time with the band.
“I look back at it now and I feel like I got kicked out of hell. So, whatever. It was abusive, for sure. It was just abusive. It was unnecessary. … Dave even said he had a resentment toward me that he couldn’t let go, and I didn’t know what it was.”
Ellefson recently did an interview with The Metal Circus where he spoke at length about his dismissal from the group.
“I’m always gonna be known for my work in Megadeth,” he said. “But me not being in Megadeth is not of my choice. [Laughs] I think people are appreciative that I’m continuing to make music — at least from what I’ve seen. It’s not like I left the band and said, ‘Fuck you. I’m out.’ ‘Cause if I did that, and then if I was trying to start new bands, people would be, like, ‘F*ck you, Ellefson. You left our favorite band. F*ck you. We don’t care.’ People know that that was not my decision; it’s not the way I would have handled that at all.”
“Clearly I’m not mad about the past,” he continued. “I’m not disrespectful. I didn’t just close the door on Megadeth and say ‘f*ck you’ and move on to something else; I didn’t do that at all. I will always be an ambassador for that group and for those songs and for that music, because I’m a part of that.”
Ellefson was asked if he was the victim of “unnecessary criminalization.”
“A hundred percent,” he said. “F*cking a hundred percent I was. Everything about that was just not okay. [Laughs] But you can spend your life trying to get justice, trying to go down that road, and it’s kind of like it always just follows you. I had some good advisors around me, and at some point, it’s, like, ‘Look, it is what it is. What happened, happened. Just move on.’ Life is lived forward, not backward… Own your shit and move on. Which is what I did. The night that a video was put out of me that I knew nothing about, and there it was. And all of a sudden, it’s, like, hey, own your shit. All right. Whatever.”
Ellefson still thinks other factors were at play when it came to his being fired from Megadeth.
“I think the bigger picture here… ‘Cause I think right away… Look, I came forward and said, ‘It is what it is. Sorry. It’s embarrassing,’” he said. “But the fact that I was discounted from my band was clearly… I think people can see, because (the announcement) was personally signed (by Mustaine)… There was other resentments and other things behind that. And I think that’s what became clear. And again, I did my best to try to mend that fence and to fix that, but he didn’t wanna know about it. So it is what it is. I have not spent the last two years walking around saying ‘f*ck you’ and ta-da-da-da-da. If anything, hey, I wish you well. Get on with your life. If that’s what it is, then it’s better to go our separate ways.”
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